Wildflowers Burning
by chesshyrecat
Summary: There is a price to pay for everything. Sometimes the price is too high. And sometimes that doesn't matter. Naruto lost everything, everyone. He clawed his way, tooth and nail, to the past, to a world where he can make it right. He can change it all. He can do this, he will fix it. So why does he still smell wildflowers burning?
1. Chapter 1

A/N- God, it's been a long time since I've used this site. I'm avoiding shame-deleting the last of my old fics by just making a new account. I hope y'all enjoy the story, thank you for reading, and the next update will be posted soon!

Splatters of blood soaked a black trail into the ash. Slow, tired footsteps followed a beaten path. Sunlight beat into the ground of this thin graveyard of a forest. It was a hot day, the sky overhead was unduly azure. It looked strange, out of place in this sea of muted greys. Ash covered everything. Rubble was scattered, tree carcasses peeling away into nothing. It was no longer a country, just a wasteland. There was nothing to salvage, Konoha had burned for days before all the fires had died. Metal melted, bricks crumbled, bones disintegrated until nothing remained but ash. Some trees farther from populated areas survived, but the soil was rotting and they were dying. He'd walked for a fortnight before he saw green- the water was sour, the land barren, there was no food to be found. Nothing stirred in this land. Nothing but Naruto.

He settled into his nook between what once were high roots. Now they were lifeless husks, petrified in heat. He'd created a small hollow beneath the stump of tree to curl up under to protect himself from the elements. He drank his water, filtered twice through fabric and still bitter, from a small bowl of carved wood. There was no food for him. Kyuubi bore the burden of keeping his body running, pumping chakra into it day and night to keep his heart beating. Every ounce of fat had been shorn from his body, and most of the muscle. He was a shell, same as the land.

His repose lasted until the shadows had lengthened from those of high noon, and he slowly trod his way back to where the village once stood, and ascended to the top of lmp of rock that had been the hokage monument. His blunt, rusted kunai dug deep into his arm, bringing blood welling to the surface. It was slower than it once was, his blood pressure abysmal. He used his fingers, crude instruments to get the job done, to trace out runes and marks onto the rock quickly, fraying the skin of his calloused fingers. The marks of seals long forgotten trailed along massive swathes of rock, small characters making up infinitesimal portions of the bigger picture. It spanned nearly the entirety of the flat plateau. The swirl of seals, more intricate than imaginable and larger than life, has consumed nearly three years of work.

By the time the moon rose into a dark sky, the blood had stopped coming from the inkwell of his scarred left arm, but rather the fingers he used instead of brushes, grinding against rock. The pain was nothing, by now. It hardly even registered until he started scraping against bone. The man glanced at his wrecked, throbbing, mutilated hands. He'd usually stop now, return to his hollow and sleep. Allow the fox to rest a little, allow his hands to heal. He looked at the waning gibbous moon. He had less than a month to finish and comb over for any mistakes. There was no room for failure. Not the slightest margin of error. He kept drawing.

He didn't really have a concept of tired anymore, he'd far surpassed tired, weary, exhausted, and now existed in a robotic stagnation of mind, body pressed forward forward forward.

He had long since stopped thinking.

He could not fail.

Would not fail.

* * *

Matarou Ueda was an old man. His bones creaked, his spine hunched, his eyesight had left him bleary eyed and his hearing was far from its prime. His family was gone: his first son had hustled off to some city and kept on going, and after the letters trailed off, the farmer could only hope that he was well, wherever he was; his second had went off to become a shinobi, and never came home after leaving for war. His wife had died in her sleep, peacefully, and he had buried her with perennial wildflowers over her grave. She had always loved them, had potted them and brought them home to fill their small house. Matarou was an old man, and he was lonely. After his boys stopped helping him with the farm, he had had to start selling off large chunks that he couldn't take care of. The money from that and the plots he had remaining were enough to live off of, even a little more. Perhaps one day his sons would come home, and he would not bear the shame of being unable to feed them.

Matarou was lonely, and he was old, and if when he saw the red headed stranger limping slowly down the raised dirt path, he'd called out to Kaito, his young, old, brave Kaito, then no one would blame him for his blind, sad hope. And if he kept the man- who uttered a slow "thank you," lip read, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time, as if he barely remembered how, with such genuine meaning- for dinner, well, old men are allowed to be a bit selfish sometimes.

The man stays. He takes over tending the fields, doing the manual labor that had taken its toll on Matarou Its a long time before he really eats, the man is more of a mouse at first, eyeing it warily, as if it may eat him instead. But eventually he starts eating properly, eating well. It's a lot, but the younger man worked the farm much better than Matarou had been able to, bringing in larger yields and enough to feed the extra mouth, even if he ate for two. If Matarou sometimes calls him Kaito, well, his memory is going after all. No one would blame him.

When Matarou dies in his sleep, it happens peacefully, quietly, on a silvery morning in early spring when the grass is still covered in frost. All assets are willed to an Uzumaki Kaito, who makes a journey to the next farm over to sell the land to a woman with soft green eyes and a melodious voice. Two young ones dash around, squealing and laughing beneath their feet. She offers a small sum, says its not the value of the land but its what she can give for it, and he takes it with a quiet thank you. She tells him he will always be welcome there, that she'd seen him helping old Mister Ueda and she was very glad he had, and that he could come back any time and to ask for Ai.

Kaito, a man with long crimson hair and eyes tired, kind, and blue, left with a knapsack of things, most sealed into the fabric itself, rather than held. Money, a few week's provisions, ink, a small sack of seeds, and a book of maps filled with pressed wildflowers. He hums a vague tune that tickles his memory, and he walks.

He measured East by the sun and started walking. He could run it, but he had time.

Time was something he had a lot of.

* * *

Naruto, Kaito now, walked forward, onwards, into trees and forests and rugged terrain. It was no burden. The green, the fresh air, the living, breathing forest made something in his heart click just right. He trained by moonlight, past katas slowly reconstructed, rebuilding his muscles' memory, regaining strength lost under starvation and not fully returned by the plow. He did push-ups until he fell asleep, channeled incrementally increasing quantities of chakra through his hands to swing from branch to branch like a monkey before leaping between them like in the days of his ANBU squad. He created perfect spheres of spiraling chakra with enough force in them to crumble a building before dissipating them into the air.

He didn't sleep though. Sleep was not for veterans, sleep was not for survivors. The woods made him feel alive. Sleep, _dreams_ , made him feel more than dead. Made him feel so utterly destroyed that he felt as if he would collapse in upon himself. Made him screech forward and pound his fists into trees until his hands bled and the trees toppled. Made him fall to his knees on the forest floor and wail, howl, fucking caterwaul at the loss he felt.

He would make it right though.

Wouldn't he?

When he reached Konoha, he cried. He looked over the city, his home, the land he would happily die to protect, complete and whole and colorful and _there_ , and something in his heart, a wall around it perhaps, just shattered. He wept, tears falling from his eyes as he dropped to his knees.

He had been so alone, for so long.

He was home.

He rehearsed what he would say, at the gates. Despite his time at the farm, he had yet to really recall fluent speech.

"I am Uzumaki Kaito. I'm a bit of a jack of all trades. I coming from the northern reaches of fire country," he said. Then he said it again. And again. It was odd, to hear his own voice. He hadn't spoken to Matarou much at all, and the old man seemed to be of the same predisposition as well. Matarou was a third deaf and half blind; he better appreciated the work he had given, the mutuality the two shared, the embodiment of the son he wasn't, to words. He didn't ask any questions or expect any answers, and it was comfortable. The two were content, and Naruto- Kaito- had found a place to heal, just a little.

He pondered the passing of his friend as he made his way to the Konoha gate.

The chunin guards on shift squinted at him warily. One of them seemed familiar, and when he placed a name to the face- and distinctive purple hair- a wash of memories flooded over him. _Anko._

She had died early, before the fourth war or the burning. She had shown up to proctor the chunin exam in fishnets and little else. She had spent a long weekend drinking with him, once, dragging him to bars all over town as they talked and talked and talked. She had been lonely, like him, as a kid. She had been brave.

Currently, the girl- not quite a woman, maybe seventeen, nineteen at this point?- was pouting like a petulant child. She's once told him that before a good half of the shifts had been relegated to Kotetsu and Izumo, guard duty was essentially the Tora mission of chunin. Unavoidable and, though rarely actually disastrous, it was time consuming and, depending on your level of patience, exceedingly frustrating.

"Who are you?" She asked, and he found himself scrambling. He'd gotten distracted and now words seemed out of reach. "State your business here ."

He struggle to grip the words as he said them, but they came out of his mouth nonetheless. "I am Uzumaki Kaito. I'm from the northern reaches of Fire Country." She frowned slightly, at his stilted words. She had asked another question, he had to answer it.

"I'm a bit of a jack of all trades. My father's dead, and I need work. I came to the city to find some." This talking business is not for him. Anko was glaring suspiciously because that happened when people didn't talk like human beings, she'd tensed up, her right hand was itching the side of her pants leg, above her kunai pouch. He had to consciously not react, to stay calm. He needed- he needed to appeal to her, specifically.

"I... am sorry. I've... been alone. For years. Talking is... hard." He had to take lengthy pauses to properly arrange the words in his head. Something in Anko's eyes softened. She relaxed almost imperceptibly, tilted her head ever so slightly, nodded.

She motioned for him to be let in.

He walked through the gates, and he was home.


	2. Chapter 2

Konoha is just as he remembered it, sort of. It's old, it's something different. Cities change, they grow. It's a living being, and by the time he was twenty it was a different place to when he was five. Still, it's home.  
The streets are dusty, the buildings are painted, the people are alive. He takes it all in with a reverence. Home.  
It's so vivid, so colorful. People pass in vibrant yellow, pink, blue kimonos, signs painted in reds and golds plaster storefronts. Ochre buildings, sepia streets, ocean-blue sky. Unlit crimson lanterns strung across streets glow in the sunlight.  
He takes it all in, and breathes easier than he had in a long time.  
It's beautiful.

The crowd is raucous, though. Pressing, claustrophobic. It's not long before flashes of hair have him jerking to call after someone dead, before the idle conversation of civilians stops being familiar and starts being an overwhelming crush of noise. He makes a quick turn away from the main center, following the sound of quiet.  
He creeps through the shadows, darting around people and to a destination that he doesn't realize until he's wandering the training grounds. Quiet. Loud voices, muffled sounds of a wild spar drive him to walk the other way. The leaves are just starting to turn, the collection of colors similar to those of a mango- ranging from maple green to a warm red.  
He treads the beaten dirt until he finds himself at the gates of the forest of death, the sun low on the horizon. He remembers the chunin exams, he remembers Orochimaru. He remembers watching it burn. He remembers Anko. He hops the fence, a small chakra-enhanced jump landing him inside the grounds.  
He walks.

He catches a rabbit- what an out of place creature- with his hands. He breaks its neck, builds a fire, starts to roast the meat. He nearly pukes.  
He's trembling, sweating, and soaked from the unnecessarily high powered suiton jutsu he conjured. Sakura's green eyes, her pink hair, her damn need to save one more kid, flash behind his eyelids. Flames crawl up his legs, licking his torso. Ayame screams, caught in the rubble. He sees her corpse while it's being consumed by the flame. He can't do this.  
He can't save anyone.  
He's been fooling himself for the past three years, the past lifetime.

He stands. He walks to the river. He takes a drink. He washes his face. He breathes.  
He needs to talk to Kurama.

He finds a tree with high roots. He settles in between them. He breathes. He closes his eyes and sinks, sinks deep into himself.  
His mindscape had become uglier. The sewers of his younger years had been transformed into a green valley. It burned when Konoha did. The ashes were waist high in places, he sunk into them in his dreams, drowned in the screams of a dying village. It was a wasteland, covered in burnt scraps of childhood. A brutalized copy of Kakashi's Icha Icha lay, barely orange and half submerged in ash. His old frog wallet was somewhere, soaked in blood and surrounded by spilt coins.

He waded through ash and ash and ash until he surmounted a hill. The bars of the cage were near-set trees, he'd managed to rebuild those. The fox had hated the metal box he'd rotted in.

"Kurama," he called out, slipping between the trunks. "I did it." It reverberated, as if he'd yelled into a cave.  
Grey dust flew everywhere as the fox, the great Kyuubi, unearthed itself from the ashes. He was smaller, every part of him thinner. His nine tails curled like snakes around his torso, winding and unwinding and kicking up ash. He was tired.

"You think I don't know, kit? Your little astrology trick didn't mean there wasn't a toll. It just meant it didn't kill the both of us." It growled at him, even as he calmly paced forward.

He wrapped his arms around the mighty beast's foreleg. "Thank you." He felt the heat, the fire of Kurama's soul scream agony into his skin. He held on. Fire couldn't hurt him in his mindscape. Fire couldn't hurt him in his mindscape. Fire couldn't-  
Kurama kicked him back, and he landed on his ass, kicking up a cloud of dust. "Cut it, kit. I didn't have a say in the matter."  
You did. You helped. You kept me alive, you'd reform if you didn't. Free."  
"Thank me by eating, you brat. Thank me by not fucking wasting this. Thank me by quitting your little angst party and getting out there and doing what you came here to do. Thank me by letting me rip out that Madara traitor's throat. Don't hug me, human. And don't play the martyr. Your angst is noxious." The fox settles back down, beginning to sink once more into a pile of smoldering ashes. Kaito was very clearly dismissed.

"May what lives never die," he says. The fox once taught him the blessing of spirits, had shown him flashes of what life had been before being passed from jail to jail as a twisted heirloom of sorts.  
"Fuck off, kit."  
He does.

* * *

When he wakes, he wanders to find food. The Forest of Death was not a hospitable place, but it could be a haven, provided you knew what you were doing. The morning flower vine held fine berries, he remembered Anko teaching him, but it looked all too much like the water blossom which would kill you in three hours flat. The kitsune had handled all poisons he ingested in his childhood, but right now he was fairly sure with any extra strain the Kyuubi might roast him in his sleep in revenge.

He finds the five petaled flower near the bank, midnight purple blossoms speckled with white, just a little upstream. He traces the vein pattern on the bottom of the leave, spreading out from a center spine, one of the minor tells that it's not, in fact, its lookalike. He methodically plucks and eats its fruit- small, slightly tart blue berries. Food left him uneasy, even after the past few months. He ate as he had to, as was necessary. He was fairly sure it wasn't enough, though.  
He strips a spruce tree with his blunt, rusty kunai, shedding brown sections of bark to reveal a peachy white. He peels strips of soft bark away, shoving one into his mouth to chew, tucking the rest into his pockets. Not incredibly nutritious, but it was something. He'd have to go to the market soon. He needed proper food, he needed weapons. He needed money, too, to get those things, but he could manage for now. He had a plan to handle that. He needed at least something, first. A blade would be good, though he couldn't afford the quality he'd usually call necessary. Still, a bad blade is better than no blade, so long as you don't trust it.  
Then he could do what he came to.

He'd have to train, first. Pulling himself up, hanging off of a tree branch, the strain in his arms only highlighted the the loss of muscle mass. He was far from the pinnacle of strength he'd once been, weak and ill and tired. A sheen of sweat formed over his skin, and he continued to pull himself up under willpower alone.

He could do this, though.  
He had to.  
Failure was not an option.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N- I've decided on an update schedule- I'm going to be uploading roughly a 1,000+ word chapter every two days! We'll see how well I stick to it, but I've got some buffer already written. Thank you so much for reading, and as always, love you all.

* * *

It was in the pre-dawn twilight that Uzumaki Kaito made his way to a small weapons shop in town, chewing mint leaves. A few early birds potter to and fro, and he brushes past them with little of note. It's not technically open yet, he doesn't think, but there is a man behind the counter fiddling with the register, and the door opens when he pushes at it. Bells tinkle and a small child comes hurrying up to him. Tenten.

"Hello mister Shinobi-san!" she bubbles, gazing up at him. How old was she- eight? She had been his senior, once. Then his subordinate. Then dead. Red starts to spread across her small blue tunic, to trickle down from the corner of her mouth and from her hairline. Kaito keeps himself very carefully neutral.

"Ah, hello," he replies, gently guiding her away from his knees. His hand on her weeping crimson shoulder comes off clean. It's not real, it's not real. He is fine. He closes his eyes, takes a breath. When he opens them, the inquisitive little panda child is peering up at him and notable not covered in gore.

She tugs on his pant leg. "Can I help you mister? What are you looking for? I like the senbon and the kunai and the trench knives and the shuriken and the daggers, and and and" she hurtles in one breath. Kaito smiles indulgently.

"Dangerous," is all he manages to say. He thinks, remembers her spark, her flare, her passions. Her determination to prove that she, was more than her gender. "From that… I think, you must be too."

She positively beams at him. "Yes! I'm going to grow up to be like Tsunade! She's stronger than everyone!" He thinks about Granny, about his object of many fantasies, resting upon her head. He remembers good times, he remembers days, good days, where she snuck children candy and pretended very hard to be a cold, heartless ice queen.

"If you work hard, you could become even stronger than _her_ ," he whispers, conspiratorially. The small child looks aghast at the concept, as if she had not even conceived the possibility, then rushes off to her father. Kaito, amused, half-listening to the high-pitched, breathless yammering of an overexcited child as he continues to browse the racks of weapons. He spies a tanto with a hilt wrapped in crimson cloth, a dark blade. It reminds him of a sword he'd bought from this very store in a whole other world. He picks it up, pulls it across his palm to see beads of blood well almost immediately in the sliver of split skin. He runs his tongue over the small wound, copper-sweet, and watches as it coagulates. He smiles, swinging the blade gently in his hand, feeling out the balance. It's good, gorgeous, better than most blades and definitely better than the kunai he's been using. He checks the price and winces. He sets it down, and tries not to look for _good._

Tenten's father, a man he never really got to know, ambles over. "Can I help you find something? I know my daughter can be a little… excitable, I hope she didn't bother you at all."

"Ahhh, yes. I do… need a little help." He admits. Then thinks. "She is a... lovely girl. She will be a strong kunoichi one day."

"Ahh, one day," the man agrees. "For now, she's just a little girl with a bit too much interest in sharp objects. I'm enrolling her in the academy this year, I hope they can tame her a little." Kaito looks at the untamed little one mentioned, currently battling the air with a small foil. He smiles.

"Forgive me, let me introduce myself. I'm Ryouta, and that little beast is Tenten. You've really charmed her, you know. So anyhow, what are you looking for, ah-" he trails off.

It takes a moment for the expected response to process. "Kaito. Uzumaki. Ah, Uzumaki Kaito, sorry." He shoves a hand in the back of his hair, tugs. It's painful to be so utterly incompetent at speech. Small children don't judge stilted sentences, don't think too hard about who he is and why he's there. "I'm looking for a blade. I'm not… picky. I don't have much money for it right now, so nothing too nice. I'll be able to..." he flounders, fishing for the right word, "replace. Replace it soon."

Ryouta nods, seeming to ignore Kaito's complete ineptitude. "I see, I see. Well, there are a few options, depending on what you need it for. I noticed you liked that tanto- do you have a preference of sword style?"

Naruto had known all about swords, learnt to wield them in lieu of fighting just with fists. Kaito shrugged.

"We can stick with tantos, then," Ryouta decides. He gesture to a rack to their left. "These ones aren't the highest quality, but there are a lot of ninja who prefer them. They're easy enough to keep sharp and very light- it helps those who rely mostly on speed. They break fairly easily though, using them to block heavy blows isn't always the best idea." Another rack over, he continues.

"These are sturdier, but heavy and once they're dull, they're dull. There are more swords around that you can take a look at, but these are the lowest priced tantos for proper combat. Take a look." He then leaves Kaito alone without waiting for a dismissal on the customer's part- thankfully- to wrestle a large, heavy blade out of his young hellion's hands. Kaito silently wishes him good luck.

He struggles for a moment- he generally relied on speed but he didn't need it for long and did need to hack apart a body. He settles on the first rack and whittles his choices down to two fairly quickly, between one with a slightly longer blade and another with a more comfortable handle. He chooses the cheaper one- the latter, and brings it up to the counter to pay. He hands over the necessary ryo and remembers one more thing.

"Where can I buy paper?" He blurts.

Ryouta looks up. "Hm?"

"I prefer to make my own tags. Where could I get some blank ones?" He elaborates. The man begins to answer but Tenten, who had moved on to embedding shuriken into the floor behind the counter pipes up.

"Oh! Oh!" She starts dashing around at high speed, and before Ryouta could properly respond, she's next to Kaito with a small stack of papers in her hands.

"I was trying to make my own tags so I got my friend Kita to give me some! But then Daddy got mad because he said I would kill everyone and my dog! I don't wanna kill my dog!" Ryouta shrugged helplessly. Kaito related. He took a moment to formulate a proper response.

"Thank you, Ten-chan. It's very nice of you to give me these." He attempts to to placate. "One day, I can teach a little about them. So you don't blow up your dog." The Tenten of his time had already known explosive sealing, he wondered where she'd gotten it from. He wondered how many times she'd singed off her own eyebrows.

The girl's eyes widened, and she tried to tackle him into a hug. What she'd embraced was a cylindrical clear display case, and she looks up in confusion to see a swinging door with tinkling bells.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N- So I'm crossposting this onto AO3 with longer but less frequent chapters. If you like the format or longer chapters better, then here's the link! (Insert of spaces- this site doesn't like links)

www archiveofourown com/works/5673142

I'm updating on a four day schedule, with FFN updates on 1 and 3, AO3 on 4, and 2 as an empty day, for this story at least.

Have fun and enjoy the story, and I'd really appreciate reviews! I love you all and hope you like it.

* * *

Anko liked 44. The training ground was treacherous, sure, it was called the Forest of Death; it's really not surprising. The thing is, people are worse. You can trust a snake to be venomous, a giant spider to try to feed you to her young, a plant to be poisonous but really look like regular blueberries, you swear. But people? People couldn't be trusted not to stab you in the back, but you still were supposed to smile and make nice until they did. Anko didn't do either anyway, but she resented the expectation. People were overrated in her opinion.

The Forest of Death, despite being a vast resource of survival training, was despicably underutilized. Anko wasn't really complaining though, if it kept people out of her hair. Kids were annoying, adults were dipshits, there was no winning either way.

The Forest of Death had nearly been destroyed, bulldozed for construction sp on a few occasions, and saved only by its wide host of rare species native to the small, enclosed biome. It was too inhospitable to the unprepared, had killed a few too many genin, dumb civilians, and even dumber chunin. The death count was classified, funnily enough.

Frankly, Anko went there to relax.

So when of all things, she stumbles across a fucking _person_ , a mop of brilliant red hair attached to a stranger hanging off of a branch, it was understandable for her to be nonplussed.

Had anyone asked Kaito, he likely would have said that it was less understandable for her to embed three senbon into his back as an immediate reaction to stumbling across a human being in a semi public place, but no one did so it's irrelevant.

Kaito's response to the sharp pain was to swing himself up onto the branch he was just doing pull ups from, a hands flying together to start signing when he saw… Anko.

Anko, on the other hand, had already pulled out kunai by the time the man had swung to face her from on top of his branch to reveal blue eyes, sunken cheeks, and generally a very familiar face. The man from the gate.

Anko sheathes her kunai- Kaito doesn't relax for a second- and groans. "Oh for fuck's sake civvie, the hell you're doin' in here? Gotta death wish?"

Anko takes a look at the man, warily edging backwards towards the tree trunk, and away from her. He had no shirt on in the heat of the early autumn, she noticed. She ran her eyes over his exposed torso, catching on his defined ribs, the ugly pink burn scars knotting up from his hips and covering the majority of his left side. She waits, he makes no move to engage, frozen up there.

"Civvie, get out of the fucking tree." Nothing.

"Civvie. I don't know what you're doing in here, and frankly I don't want to. Get the shit down here because you and I are going to have a nice, long talk about why these places are off limits to civilians." The guy looks up, and she knows that look. That's the expression of someone who not only terrified, but is very much about to bolt. A hunted animal. Anko weighs her options, sees if she can just leave him there. He'd probably die. If she sent someone else, they'd ask why she didn't do it. And, come to think of it Anko's little game of "you better hope I didn't just poison you but I guess we'll see" would probably croak him. Ugh. She fucking hates dealing with people, and reaches a hand ever-so-slightly down to perhaps find a paralytic-laced senbon. People who don't move are easier to deal with. She may suck at people, but she recognized the time for a tactic swap.

"Shit. Okay. Kaito, that's your name right?" she says, doing her best not to be threatening. She remembered what he'd said, how alone he'd been. "Kaito, I'm not gonna hurt you. This place is dangerous, congrats on being alive right now, but I need you to get of that tree." Slowly, painstakingly slowly, he creeps forward along the branch. Anko feels like she's trying to coax a cat out from a corner.

"That's it. Kaito, I'm not sure what was on those senbon. I carry a bunch on me, I don't keep good track, you got me? I need to pull them out, see what was on them. Can you please get down here so I can?" He stops moving. He contorts, leaning into the arm he bends behind him. He drops three bloody senbon onto the ground. Then he looks at her, and jumps down.

"Nothing." He says.

"What?"

"Not poisoned, the senbon." He says. He takes a couple of steps back so she can pick them up. She slowly goes down to pick one up and tap it, touches her finger to her mouth, spits. Nothing but blood.

"Looks like you're right, civ. Are you even a civilian? You don't look it. You sure as hell ain't Konoha. The fuck you're doing here? I should turn you in, toss you up to Ibiki, see what he can get you to say." The man grimaces. Opens his mouth. Shuts it.

Anko softens, a little. "Just tell me why you're here. Like, _here_ here. In the forbidden-ass doom forest."

He takes a moment to think. "People. Too many people, there." He make a vague gesture in the direction from which she came. That was… understandable, to be honest.

"Fair enough. Come on, I'm taking you in. You've got a lot of explaining to do. You got a shirt, somewhere?" Kaito nods, gestures to a wet blue civilian shirt hanging over the branch. He must've been washing it. She grabs it, stuffs it into her bag. He can't exactly avoid attracting attention without it, especially not with those scars. She wonders how he got them.

He grimaces, looks around. She realizes what he's about to do a second too late, and by then he'd grabbed a sword that she really should have noticed from against the tree and there was nothing left but a few leaves in his place. Definitely not a civilian. She tried to feel for a chakra signature, but there was nothing but some weird rat creature in the foliage behind her, a few birds in the branches above.

This was… an issue.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N** \- Hi all! Sorry for the short chapter- next one will be longer, I swear. Shout-out to all of you who visit this story frequently- I see you New Zealand. And Netherlands. And a surprising number of other countries. Seriously, it means a lot to me that you're all reading my story. It's a silly fanfiction written on a whim, but it's precious to me. As always, hope you enjoy, and reviews are love.

* * *

i. Obligations

Upon Anko's discovery- and of course she'd discovered him, how the hell had he thought she'd known so much about the forest of death in the first place? Reading about it? God, he was so incredibly dumb- Kaito realized that wasting time in Konoha was only going to make trouble. His home wasn't his anymore, it was theirs. It was Sakura's and Sasuke's and Kakashi's and Old Man Hokage's. It was the real Naruto's, it was Anko's. He was an outsider.  
Anyhow he had a few people he needed to track down, a few obligations he needed to fulfill.

He'd run. He ran and ran and ran until he left Fire Country far behind him. The oaks and maples gave way to connifers and behemoths of unidentifiable species. The warm breeze was replaced by drizzle and slightly overcast skies. It felt much more like autumn, this far north, where crimson leaves covered the ground, but clung enough to trees to provide cover.

Now, he sat quietly in a tree, waiting. Hidan was a relatively easy target, in a sense. What it really took was getting him alone- something that had taken a good week of observation. He was always with Kakuzu, in public, or both. It was very strategic, and almost certainly on his partner's behest. Hidan was neither strategic nor the sort to take precautions. He was about as careful as a brick was subtle. He was about as subtle too.

Hidan wasn't a skilled ninja, had never needed to be. By himself, anyone without full knowledge of his techniques and enough skill to take him down as quickly as necessary was roadkill. Even so, without surprise and luck, they were almost certainly dead. With his partner? They were fairly unstoppable. Kaito wasn't ready to rely on his strength alone yet, he was still far too shaky for that. But he could do it.

He had to.

He starts paint a seal onto one of Tenten's slips while hiding in a birch tree, reopening the scar on his left arm. A few drops of blood drip from his perch, onto ground right on the lightning side of the Shimo-Kumo border. When he thinks about it, he doesn't have any need for ink. Blood was better keyed to his chakra anyway, and he was always carrying it. He's done a lot of this- sitting around in trees, he means. Though, come to think of it, drawing in his own blood fits as a subject of that thought too. Trees were a fairly obvious place to hide, but people still didn't look up enough. They were just that much more cover, the high ground gave just enough of an advantage, and any Konoha nin knew how to maneuver and leap among branches with a speed not uncomparable to on land.

He sits now, bloody seal in hand, as he waits. It's not too long before his mark comes into view, holding a large bag, mouthing what are probably obscenities. He wonders mildly what the man is walking with through this forested no man's land.

Kaito waits until the ninja is right beneath him and drops, clamping a hand over his mouth and the seal onto his neck. In a dim flash of red, they're gone.

The first time, when a young Naruto had experimented successfully with his father's hiraishin seals, the warping of dimension, the intense pressure, the choking, the pain, the perceptory shock, had hit him harder than a hammer to the head. He still couldn't describe the feeling of the gaps between spacetime, the brutal shock of switching reality around. He puked his guts out before falling into the grass with a blinding migraine. He'd since refined and adjusted to the technique, but what twisted his gut uncomfortably now could incapacitate others. Especially if they're transported just so as to then immediately plant themselves, head first, into a tree. Kaito silently thanked his human airbag, before hitting the back of his head with the hilt of his tanto just in case.

Hidan's skull makes a cracking noise against the bark and he lets out a groan. Blood starts leaking down his neck.

Kaito knows this is only a short window, but this shock would hopefully give him the chance to end this quickly. He's learned better than to assume anything, though.

He unsheathes his blade and pulls it back, swings. He separates the body, already wobbling to its feet, from the head in one stroke. He can feel the bending protest of his blade in return as it scrapes through vertebrae. The head makes a squelching thud on the ground, and he hears Hidan curse as he bounced slightly. Kaito ignored him as he first hacked off the left arm, then the right. This blade wasn't built to cut bone, but it served its purpose. He knelt, one hand shoving the jerking torso into the tree to saw through the legs.

Hidan's head had figured out exactly what was happening at this point, and was screaming bloody fucking murder, and Kaito didn't feel very bad about grabbing it by its silver hair, taking a kunai to it, and just jamming the wad of stands into his mouth as a makeshift gag before shoving the still-protesting head into a black bag.

Kaito looks at the body. He was hesitant to burn it. Ashes didn't reform, unless they did, and anyway fire was not something he wanted to deal with right now. It makes him feel slightly ill, which the sickly sweet copper smell doesn't. Ironic. He looks at his blade. Blood soaks the ground. He places a knee on the shoulder of one arm, begins to saw at the elbow.

This, he can do.

He has to.


	6. Chapter 6

i. Bounty

Kaito hated getting blood on everything. He didn't like the attention, didn't like the stares. He may have been wearing a half mask, goggles, and hood, but the stares followed him. Henges could account for it, but he had scraped all the way down to the bottom of the barrel making his way here, had only subsisted on the Kyuubi's for years, and now without the support it was getting harder to regenerate his chakra, bring it back up to any decent level without stopping use of it entirely.

He walks into the bounty office of Yugagakure. Dumps the large black duffel that the contents of which had actually once owned on the desk.

He unzips the duffel, the smell of gore permeating the small space, retrieves Hidan's head. It's still screaming through the- now cloth- gag.

The poor man behind the counter doesn't seem to know how to handle this development. Kaito narrows his eyes, then pulls out his tanto. He slices vertically up through his vocal chords, tucks the end of the cloth into the slit to keep it from healing. The head is no longer screaming, but the man looks even more traumatized. Kaito has run out of energy to care, the clerk would thank him for it if he knew how loud that thing could be.

He scribbles an account number on a sheet of paper, passes it to the sweating, shaking man, and leaves.

It's not his problem now.

* * *

ii. Nostalgia

The Konoha nights have started to bite, a little. They're no longer the balmy, nostalgic oil paintings of fireflies and city lights. Just blue shaded trees and loud bugs and louder birds. He had moved on to hiding out in the forests surrounding Konoha, high up in the forest's canopy, where Anko wouldn't be looking for him.

The nights were the worst. It had nothing to do with the weather; frankly, if he wasn't going hypothermic, he could care less. There were just too many shadows, too many memories weighing on his shoulders, too many noises that made him jump. Everything in this world seems like too much.

He can't actually sleep up here, not until he drops of exhaustion or relents to eating the seeds he'd collected in 44. They'll knock him out for a couple of hours. He feels too exposed, is too aware of everything below him, within a one mile radius, to sleep. There are so many ways he could be attacked up here, so many ways he could be spotted.

He can't rent an apartment, not yet. Too many people to talk to, too many questions to answer. He'd need a paper trail too large to be worth making up, nor is it worth it having to track him by. He's a ghost in the system. Off of all records- the fact that no one but Anko has come looking for him means that she hadn't reported the strange man in the forest. It was sort of endearing, in a way. He wonders why she hadn't.

The moon shines bright, a full pale disk, a branch of leaves silhouetted against it. The sky juxtaposes a clear, dark, raven black against it. The stars twinkle dutifully, spread across it like flickering lamp lights.

He ponders on the impossibility of what he's achieved. He pinned down the exact moment in the millennium where he could tie the astral movements into something more, use the energy of the stars to rip a hole in spacetime. It should have killed him. The stars, the pretty little dots in the distance, twinkle innocently at him.

It was peaceful. It was home. Kaito started to relax into himself, breathing slowing. He was not here, he was in the old apartment. Sakura was yelling about the filth of it, Sasuke was grouching by the window. It was the sunlight was warm, the yellow making even his squalid quarters look inviting. The plants everywhere, the only decoration of note, tangled together and climbed up wires strung haphazardly.

Something cracked, below- far below- and the illusionary floor fell away to the forest. Kaito scrambled , searching for the threat, looked up to see a crimson moon,

Something cracks below him, and he jerks- swinging around inefficiently to try and determine the source.

He looks up to see the moon blood red, leafy silhouettes molding into tomoe, and suddenly he's back in Konoha, burning. Sasuke stands so close to him, his face eclipsing most of Naruto's field of view. He's burning, alive, they both are, but black flames clawing up Sasuke's legs and he _isn't moving._

"Goodbye," he says. Then at the same moment, Sasuke kisses him and presses a hand against his neck. Suddenly-

-he is in the top of a tree, just outside the skirts of Konoha.

Fuck.

 _Fuck._

Naruto, Kaito, whatever the fuck he cared to be, does not think of what he is supposed to be, how he is supposed to act, about how he is trying to hide himself.

He curls into himself, heaving sobs that wrack his still too-thin form. This is the pain that threatens to tear him apart, to pull him under until he drowns.

He weeps until he can't anymore.

This is not his home.

He stands, drops out of the tree while using wind chakra to control his fall. He's not going to get any sleep tonight. He eyes the tree, its monolithic trunk, complete lack of branches until far, far up. Thinks of his weak, bony body too weak to handle any of his old fights. He once was a kage and here he is hallucinating in trees and general being a self pitying mess.

He pulls out kunai from his pockets, a couple of new acquisitions. He jumps up, careful not to use any chakra but disappointed in its lack of height, and slams them into the tree.

His shoulders jolt as his bodyweight drops onto them. He breathes. He pulls up with his left arm, out with his right before embedding the blade in the bark a foot up.

He can do this.

* * *

iii. Interlude

He was back in the forest. Anko fucking knew he was back in that goddamn forest. He was taunting her. He left little fire pits around, in a different place each night. Every now and then, she'd catch a glance of red. Bright, vivid, "I'm a target" crimson.

And then he was gone.

That asshole.

* * *

 _iv. Change_

Kaito visits the market fairly frequently, now- under a different henge each time. He buys heavy, starch-packed foods and pre-cooked meat, what he couldn't stomach making himself. He needs to try and desensitize himself, he knows. This glaring a weakness is going to bite him in the ass. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sakura screams.

He goes to Tenten's father shop and buy the silk-wrapped tanto he'd mooned over before. Tenten is off in the Academy, now. The store feels quaint and empty without her. Ryouta smiles and undercharges him. Kaito asks what his interest would be in selling custom designed seals- mostly explosive tags and storage scrolls. He knew the answer- he'd made a pretty penny in his side business before it all went to hell.

The tacit offer seems to shock the storekeeper. After a very brief round of negotiations- including an example in the form of a hastily made, rose scented smoke bomb, so as not to offput the customers- Kaito asks for an advance in the form of ink and paper. A lot of it. Kage bunshin were a very useful resource.

Naruto remembers the days when he'd rely on that jutsu and his obscene luck to get him out alive. It was the perfect technique for him- utilizing his ridiculous chakra stores and covering his unskilled, badly-trained ass. This was a long time ago. Before fighting became skill and endurance and especially stealth. Before the world had gone to hell in a handbasket. Before he became Hokage, and definitely after he'd stopped.

He kind of misses it.

Armed and now officially employed, Kaito quickly raises a new henge once outside. With brown hair, brown eyes, and paler skin, he became a very unobtrusive civilian. A civvie, he supposed, smiling slightly.

He sent a few clones off with the paper and ink to start making seals and started wandering. Thinking. Planning. It wasn't too long before his feet lead him to his old apartment- a ramshackle little building that hadn't technically been located in the slums when he was moved there. Over time, that changed.

Kaito remembered his childhood, remembered boards over his windows when someone threw a rock through it. Remembered giving up scrubbing away the graffiti some left. Remembered how ignored he was. How alone.

Maybe this time he could change that.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N- Hello all! Short chapter, I know, I'm sorry. It's midterms and I'm dying inside just a little. If I miss an update during the upcoming stress/hellstorm/doom-fated downfall of my poor, terrified grades, I'll make it up to you. As always, please review and I love you all.

* * *

i. Weak

He regrets renting the apartment, even as he does it. Matarou Takehiko gets a very good price on it- it had remained unoccupied for years and she couldn't evict the reason for it. This Takehiko person was the first to both approach Kita Miyu and the only one to stay after learning of her unfortunate resident. He wasn't surprised.

The agreement itself is very simple. He makes sure his landlady gets her money once a month and the apartment remains undamaged, and she doesn't kick him out and toss up a fuss in the legal system. He'd almost forgotten how lax the certain parts of Konoha were- he'd grown used to official business, paperwork. The slums were simple: you have cash, you get what you need.

He was settling. Attaching himself to a place, attaching himself to people. It was a risky business. It was a stupid business. He had better things to do, he had people to kill to save this village, this country, this world, from ruin. And here he was, making a nice little nest for himself with money he'd pulled from someone who was barely a player.

Weak.

He inspects his new apartment- it's, in a word, dingy. Saleable, but barely. It's grimy in the way that even if you washed it top to bottom and repainted it and refurbished it, it would still feel like a dump. He won't try. He's not here to settle, he's here for a base. He's here for privacy, for a place to leave his working clones and maybe for a place to run into Naruto.

He has two clones in the corner running through blank tags like air, making neat little stack of various sorts of explosives. Flashbangs, firebombs, smoke tags, higher powered, so on and so forth. Around four he'd have one run down to Ryouta with a delivery. He adds a clock to the small mental list of possible conveniences. It includes a bed and a decent lamp. The bare necessities comprise of food, weapons, ink, paper, and clothes.

He deliberates on who to take out next. Deidara, while an opportune target, was both the most likely to draw attention and to deal out obscene amounts of collateral damage, so he decides to wait on him. Kakuzu was generally too tough for Kaito to take out in this sorry state- he needed someone who could go down fast. No one would believe his twelve year old self if he said one day stealth would be his greatest advantage, he mused. Not even young Naruto. Sasori too couldn't be counted on to drop. Kisame though, was more human, even if he was also more shark. Flesh and blood he could do- strange teleporting plants? Less so.

He hates to think of the limitations he bears, how behind he's fallen even now that he's so far ahead of everyone else that it makes his head spin.

* * *

ii. Silence

He trains night and day, sealing lesser used training grounds to hell until not a wisp of chakra signature leaves and no one comes within two miles without him knowing. It's not uncommon for him to be interrupted and he shuts everything down and flees the scene, deploying a few clones to remove the seals as he either relocates or takes it as his cue to return to the apartment and feed himself, maybe catch some sleep.

He gets stronger.

It's slow a slow business, especially at first, when basic drills leave him panting and if he's not careful he winds up lying on the ground, too exhausted to move. Even so, he has never been short on determination. A routine like his, even carried out more by sheer willpower than strength, pushes his body beyond its limits and then further. He begins to put on weight again. Pure muscle, of course, though he has to very consciously stuff himself to do so. Food is an ambivalent presence in his life, too large of one at that, and frankly it irritates him. The necessity to feed his body, and so frequently, combined with his ridiculous phobia of the scent of meat and the lingering discomfort in his stomach ails him. It all tastes like cardboard anyway. He does not try to cook, relying on fresh produce, bread, and a lot of nuts. Nuts, he's found, are very good. Dense, rich in protein, and very clearly not meat- they're something. They're good. They're portable, which is important.

Still, despite everything, he's frustrated by his achingly slow chakra regeneration. The pool within him quavers and makes as if it will finally refill properly, but never does. There's a distinct lack of the Kyuubi's chakra circulating through his coils, only the occasional whisper of it to prove that Kurama's still there. He makes a habit of meditating, drawing in nature chakra to supplement his reserves, and hopefully help heal whatever it is that's fucking it up. It does help, some, and the extra chakra in his coils helps set him at ease.

As if he was ever at ease.

Sakura's voice echoes in the back of his head, explaining the psychology behind shellshock and trauma. _Hypervigilance is an almost paranoid state of increased awareness and perceptive behaviors to avoid threats, frequently found in veteran shinobi. It is frequently accompanied by a litany of symptoms including flashbacks, hallucinations, insomnia, depre-_

He ground his teeth, and punched the tree in front of him so hard he heard a crack. What he'd once dubbed inane Yamanaka babble silenced.

He punches the tree again, same hand. Blood stains the bark black.

It's silent.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N- Hey all! New chapter, nothing really of note to say! Feel free to skip this. Lots of POV switches and no subsection titles but that's just how this one worked out. Screw consistency, midterms exist (S/O to LilyVampire, you're a doll!). Anyhow- hope you enjoy and that it's not the shit it feels like- and please review if you can spare a moment! I currently have no beta and am stressed- all mistakes are mine.

* * *

Kaito sighs and he once more finds himself covered in blood and lugging yet another body into a bounty office. Deidara had been shouty, blond, and insane, and he was now very, very dead. The kid had been not so dissimilar to Naruto, once, but he was too high threat a risk and too active an Akatsuki member not to take out. He'd taken a different path, one similar to Sasuke's, Kaito muses. He wonders if Deidara had any friends back home who'd tried to drag him back, again and again.

He was under a henge, now. His chakra had begun to stabilize and he was finally creeping towards this body's admittedly waning potential. It was a slightly odd realization that he was getting old. Frankly, it was surprising that he'd hit twenty, given everything. His bad knee- shattered eight years back (or seventeen forward, thanks to temporal shenanigans) in Kumo, his loose shoulder- consistently sore and prone to popping out from being dislocated one too many times, and a myriad of other long-healed injuries aren't letting him forget.

The mouthy blond was tossed on the examination table. Kaito waited in silence for all proceedings to be handled and the veracity of the body to be ascerned, before asking for the bounty in cash. It wasn't an unusual request- most bounty hunters prefered to be untraceable. He wasn't excluded, from their ranks or from their preferences.

A slowly but surely aging man with money and a sword, trying to save the world.

God help him.

* * *

Kakashi had been on a normal mission. A B-rank, a casual break from his streak of S-classes that flung back a solid year. Should anyone ask why and learn that his ANBU commander had assigned him a sort of furlough so he couldn't "follow his father's footsteps through assisted suicide," he would both vehemently deny any allegations and probably break at least three of their bones, but no matter what, he was on a B-rank.

It was supposed to be relaxing, a break. Narrowly dodging a particularly vicious looking blade and, but of course, failing to fully dodge a kunai, he would have sighed. Of course it didn't work out that way, but such is life.

When a shruiken that hadn't even shown up on his radar clips his ear, he realizes that he may be in just a little bit of trouble.

* * *

Kaito fucking hates puppets. He knew. _He knew_ that Sasori was too perceptive and too protected to get cleanly.

The major weakness of the ninja world was that it was too flashy. Everyone had to confront everyone and have a dramatic showdown. No one bothers to line up and take a killshot while the target's taking a piss, they jump down from trees with fog descending beneath the full moon while throwing glitter and announcing their purpose. It wasn't until the seven years of guerrilla warfare that Naruto learned the true importance of stealth.

Picking off members of the Akatsuki while they were too concerned with other things to just look _up_ was almost comically easy. Sort of.

Trying to take down a ranged poison specialist with years of experience on him, even back in time, was not.

He'd been low on chakra, not even planning the encounter but it just sort of _happened._ And in his tired, probably mildly delirious state, and in his self appointed mission, he didn't run like hell. And now he was "just sort of" fucked.

* * *

Kakashi greets the gate guards with a casual "Yo," and a wave of his good hand. A cut on his right has opened up again and is bleeding up a storm, no need to traumatize the sweet little chunin, no?

He's putting one foot in front of the other, walking, walking, walking, walking, _falling._

Whoops.

* * *

Kaito mentally envisions a chain around the Kyuubi's neck and _yanks_ , earning a rush of flaming hot chakra through his veins. After loosening the seal between the two, the Kyuubi had discovered the absolute least helpful way to make himself useful, and proceeded to do so whenever he felt particularly enraged. It burned, brutally, and was probably going to burn out his coils eventually, but he channels it into the seal on his thigh all the same. He can feel the skin bubbling beneath his hand from his tenant's little present, but he still shifting into the gap between space, crushing two disparate locations in space time to rip through them both. Minato had been more elegant about it, but Kaito was better at Fuin. He also had Kurama, very reluctantly, on his side.

Landing, and immediately stumbling onto his face, Kaito finds himself back in 44. _It's a pity this forest keeps killing people._ He thinks, dazedly. _It's a really nice place. Good ambiance._

Kaito, bleeding into the dirt, still holding the remnants of Sasori's weird, puppety body, comes to the realization that he's very definitely suffering from what's probably all sorts of poisoning. _Fun._ From what he remembers of the old world, it'll take a few days to kill him. Sasori was just that sort of guy, he supposes.

It takes four tries to seal away the- ceramic?- remnants of the asshole, and by the end he's jelly legged and jittering too hard to stand up. He tries anyway, and flops face-first onto the forest floor with an odd sense of déjà vu.

He watches the grass inexplicably undulate and slowly turn the vibrant colors of fall, ignoring the cramping and shudders and _brighthotred_ pain in his abdomen, and maybe his arm is dissolving off but that's alright, until his vision blurs out and he starts seeing things much, much worse.

* * *

Kakashi has completed his mission. He starts mentally composing a report, detailed and refined, to later adulterate and hand in two weeks late. He's bleeding through his on-site bandages, but he's nearly home.

Nearly home.

* * *

Anko's wandering into the forest of death, maybe- just maybe- perhaps possibly hoping to run into a certain feral redhead who she just can't catch, and when she spies red out of the corner of her eye, it's about two seconds before she realizes just how much she doesn't want to deal with this.

The bloody, battered body thing isn't anything new, she's a shinobi and she's seen death. She's still mad. She's not quite sure at who, but she's sure she'll find someone to beat up soon.

It's a moment before she checks the pulse, almost as an afterthought, and was almost surprised to find one. Kind of weak, and alarmingly erratic, but _there_.

She sweeps him onto her back and pushes the thoughts of how much trouble this is going to get her into to the back of her mind. She's got a mission.


End file.
